


What Walks Ashore

by Hyululu



Category: Mushishi
Genre: Gen, bad things happen to Adashino, bad things happen to Ginko, ever persistent with the arbitrary tags, gosh this is bad actually
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-17
Updated: 2016-07-17
Packaged: 2018-07-24 15:38:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7513865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hyululu/pseuds/Hyululu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a revision of "The Heart of the Sea Sleeps In Man"<br/>Because the fic is so old now (started back in 2007!) my writing style has changed a great deal. The old chapters no longer match the new chapters, and so I'll be rewriting and improving them.<br/>The new versions will be posted here instead of replacing the original chapters, because I'd like to be able to go back and see just how much of a difference there is.</p><p>If you decide to read along as well, please let me know what you think of the changes.<br/>Thank you!</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Walks Ashore

**Sailor's Bane**

 

* * *

 

From Adashino's Journal:

 _What they tell me now about the incident, is that the children had been on the beach, helping to bring fishing boats higher ashore, to try and keep them from being swept out to sea. But during a storm that we all knew was going to be that bad…? I can't understand why there was still_ _anyone_ _on the shore at that point. I'm not trying to place the blame. I understand that our village is a small one, that our boats are hand-built, handed down through generations, and that it takes away from our resources when we lose these types of things to a storm. I just suppose that, given what we nearly lost... If it were a choice between the boats or the children, I'd have shoved the boats out to sea myself. But that's just hindsight... I'm sure everyone else in the village feels the same way._

_By my own guesses, this may have been one of the worse storms of the summer. Ashika-san tells me the villagers are calling it "Suifu no Sainan". Though, given the events that happened within the storm, I would think they'd give it a name that sounded more…ominous. Or at least something that would do justice to its intensity. After everything that happened that night, after what they saw… I wouldn't classify it as merely a 'bane'. It was a calamity, it was a disaster, it was... Well, this is just my own opinion. What it's called is trivial, and I digress._

_The children.  
The children were on the beach, and a sudden wave had pulled them out to sea. "Sailor's Bane" and the drowning children, were only the beginnings of our troubles that night..._

 

* * *

 

The rain was at Adashino's back in a deluge, soaking him to the bone. At first it was only that; only rain. He lived in a fishing village after all, and with the ocean so close there was always water. Rain or waves... getting soaked was just a routine part of life.  
At first it was only the feel of a thousand tapping fingers; cold, wet, chilling. But rain during a storm like this could be relentless, fierce, and soon his back felt like it was being pummeled. The ceaseless drumming of raindrops began to feel more like a battering, and as his skin grew cold and raw and sensitive, as the wind picked up in intensity, each drop became more sharp, more searing. Little blades that stung him everywhere. Soon it felt as if each drop was against him like a tiny hammer, and the fabric of his kimono gave no protection.

Ginko sat in the prow of the boat as Adashino rowed. The Mushishi hunched beneath his long coat miserably, soaked through just as much as the other man, and looking very much like a cat caught in the rain. His eyesight was better than the doctor's, so he stared hard out at the roiling sea, grimfaced and determined. Searching.  
Alongside them in varying degrees of distance were other boats, with men from the village either rowing furiously against the storm or scanning the tumultuous waters for the children that had been swept from the beach.  
No one thought they would find either child. Not in this weather. Not without knowing how long ago it had been since they were last seen ashore, or whether or not a rip current had taken hold of them.

It was a hopeless situation, Adashino remembered thinking. The storm was deadly. It began well before sundown and raged into the evening. And even if it had been during the day, it was so oppressively black that the sun might as well have not existed at all. The children were probably drowned. _None_ of the villagers should be out in this weather, in tiny little ineffective fishing boats, tempting fate to raise the body count higher than it already was.  
The doctor scowled to himself at the thought, but kept rowing. They _all_ kept rowing. These people had never been ones to give up their kin for lost.

Suddenly Ginko shouted something from the prow of the longboat. The wind stole the words from his lips, but the sound of his voice yanked Adashino up from his thoughts and into action. The Mushishi was pointing at the water, brows furrowed, and his gestures were sharp, trying to convey some urgent importance.

Thinking the children had been spotted Adashino shielded his eyes from the rain, leaning forward to peer over the edge of the boat, into the waters.

 

* * *

 

From Adashino's Journal:

 _I can remember it clearly. Looking down into the thrashing waves, I expected a child. A body. Anything like that. But it wasn't what I saw._  
The water directly beneath us was just that; water. Just the sea. But around us, ahead of us, it was like a viscous mass of congealed seawater. It rolled and shivered with the storm like the rest of the sea, but its surface was bizarrely smooth. It didn't break apart into peaks and foam, and the wind didn't scatter it into a spray. It remained solid and...in comparison to the rest of the sea, placid. Affected by the storm, but at the same time indifferent to it.  
Visually it made no sense. In retrospect, though... Well.

_I remember that as we moved forward our boat seemed to become dredged in this mass. Or a somewhat diffused part of it, perhaps. By my guesses it was the outer part of the thing, where it began to thin out and diffuse into the sea. I still don't really know for certain.  
What I do know is that we seemed to be moving through the storm in slow-motion, then. The water was straining against all our boats like a backwards current. Our oars sloughed through the odd, smoothed-out waves as if we were cutting them, the way one cuts through jelly. But, incredibly, this reformed itself again the moment our oars pulled away._

_I wasn't prepared for the experience of such a phenomenon. Who could be? Not even Ginko, who has always been so seemingly jaded to the bizarre nature of things, could hide his surprise._ _  
No... His alarm. He was alarmed._

 

* * *

 

Adashino could feel a burning in his arms, and it was already snaking its way across his shoulders. The viscosity of the water, or whatever the substance was, made rowing even more strenuous than it already was, and the doctor wasn't as accustomed to rowing as his fellow villagers. He was wearing out fast, but his thoughts prodded him to ignore the fire in his muscles.

'Don't stop. Keep rowing. Those children are as good as dead if any of us give up now. We are as good as dead if we stop.'

Ginko was leaning over the edge of the boat, trying to stay aboard as waves thrashed beneath them. Each heave of the water tossed them violently, and the mushishi's grip on the wood turned his knuckles white. The storm was getting worse. The sea was growing more and more congealed. None of them could survive out here much longer.  
Ginko turned to the doctor, voice barely heard above the lashing winds. “Adashino! We need to go back!”

“Not yet!” Adashino called back. Rainwater and seaspray momentarily choked him, oddly thick on his tongue, and he spat the briny liquid back into the storm. “We can find them! Keep looking!”

And then, the impossible, and miraculous; Across the waves the flailing gestures of another fisherman caught the two mens' eyes, and when they looked to him he pointed at the sea between their two boats. They looked, just in time to see one pale arm waving frantically from the water, as the missing children were carried up along the crest of a wave.  
It was astounding to see them. Not only were they alive, but they were swimming strongly, holding one another afloat and treading just enough to keep their heads above the water, despite the viciousness of the storm.  
The wave they rode dipped down abruptly and pulled them out of sight between the high wells of tumultuous water. But now that they had been spotted it was only a matter of rowing in that direction. Everyone began turning their boats, but Adashino and Ginko were the closest to the children, and the doctor was pulling at the oars with a surge of renewed strength.

Waves pitched the children into sight again, and already Adashino could see that they were so much closer. They swam towards his boat to begin closing the gap between them all the faster.

Just a couple more yards. Then one. And at last, one final pull of the oars before they were close enough. Adashino grit his teeth, forced his aching muscles to move.

And then the children were in reach! Adashino could recognize them now; siblings from Yajuu-san's house; the daughter, Saijouko, and the youngest son, Jiku. Somehow, miraculously, they had managed to swim against the storm this entire time. They were exhausted and terrified, but one of them still managed to smile when their hands at last gripped the side of the boat.

That kind of tenacity could be expected of children who grew up in a fishing village.

Ginko had sprung into action immediately. The mushishi reached out, his steady hand around Saijouko's wrist in an instant. With an impressive ease he lifted her small body from the water with one arm, the other still gripping the prow to support himself, and pulled her into the boat. Adashino took hold of the boy, lifting him aboard as well.

 

* * *

 

From Adashino's Journal:

_It's important to mention, because of my line of profession, that neither of the children were too worse for wear. Certainly they were tired after swimming against a storm, and there was a good bit of seawater coughed up. But Yajuu-san has always made sure that his offspring were strong swimmers. Well, as a rule of thumb, it's like that with everyone here. Folks who's lives revolve in and around the sea have the innate skills require for that kind of survival.  
Regardless, there is always danger. We are always at the mercy of the ocean, all of us. No matter how long we've lived here, or how well we swim. To this day we still count it as a miracle that Yajuu-san's children didn't drown._

_Not everyone is so lucky._

 


End file.
